


You Ain’t Seen Nothing Like Me Yet

by theshipsfirstmate



Series: Make You Feel My Love [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, post-4x06, souffle spoilers, the smoak ladies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 06:23:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5237741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshipsfirstmate/pseuds/theshipsfirstmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-4x06, Oliver sorts through things with the Smoak ladies. Alt-POV on the events of "I Could Hold You For a Million Years" and "No Doubt in My Mind Where You Belong," though it also stands alone. </p><p>"He tells himself that he walks out because she’s unsure, because she needs time to process, but the truth is that he’s worried about what might happen if he pushes any harder."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Ain’t Seen Nothing Like Me Yet

**You Ain’t Seen Nothing Like Me Yet**

_“What’s happening to Ray is my fault!”_

Oliver knows they’re really in for it when Felicity tells him that, with a look in her eyes he recognizes from the mirror. The guilt is eating her alive, burning like an acid through what they’ve got, because she might say it’s her fault, but he’s far from blameless in the scenario she’s laid out. He’s the reason she was gone. Lost herself, that’s what she had said, but it’s fault just the same.

He tells himself that he walks out because she’s unsure, because she needs time to process, but the truth is that he’s worried about what might happen if he pushes any harder. It’s not jealousy, Digg’s wrong about that. He and Felicity have had that conversation a few times before.

_“See, this is the problem, Oliver,” she had snapped at him once when his insecurity at her accepting the CEO position had him immaturely pressing buttons just to see what happened. “You think it’s about you and Ray, you think it’s about a choice that I made between the two of you.”_

_She had looked right through him in that moment, he remembers feeling like he was trapped in the tiny Italian hotel room, where he sat on the edge of the bed as she paced out her nervous energy. He could hear the ocean in the distance, and see it in her eyes._

_“It’s about me,” she said seriously, straddling his lap to sit on top of his legs, wrapping her arms around his shoulders though she kept as much distance between them as possible so she could look in his eyes. “It’s only about me.”_

_He can’t help himself, he drops his forehead to hers, desperate still to breathe her in, even though she’s kind of mad at him, even though they’ve already had a week and a half of each other, almost non-stop._

_“Ray could have been perfect for me in every way, which, by the way, he was not. But it wouldn’t have mattered,” she told him, fingers trailing up his scalp. “What I felt for him was…miniscule compared to what I felt for you, what I feel for you. But you wouldn’t…”_

_“Felicity.” He cut her off, breathing her name like a plea into her neck, but she was already off and away, eyes clouding over and ducking from his when he feels her tremble and tries to meet her gaze._

_“You were so determined to die,” she says, so softly he almost couldn’t hear her. “I didn’t know what else I could do.”_

He’s ready to live for them now, to fight even harder if necessary, but John’s only telling him stuff he already knows when he outlines how smart she is, how capable. Oliver’s anything but blind to that, it’s what’s got him so terrified. But his friend can’t do anything to ease the worry that maybe Ivy Town was the best of it for them.

A chill shakes his spine when he remembers how she had walked away from him in the lair earlier, dropping his hand and telling him there was nothing he could do. It felt familiar, like one of his ghosts.

_“There’s got be another way.”_

_“There isn’t.”_

It’s like their positions have been flipped, and he’s devastated by the thought of how it must have felt to try and hold onto him for the last few years.

Talking with Digg helps with his doubts that night, right up until the moment when he’s got a length of chain tightening around his neck. Just before he tosses the flashbomb, he takes a silent moment to send a prayer up to any entity that might be listening that her last memory of him isn’t his back as he walked away.

When he gets home that night, relieved and exhausted in equal measure, the first thing he has to do is apologize to Donna. It doesn’t take a therapist to figure out what he’s done here, but he still has hope that it might not be a totally lost cause, now that Ray’s back safe. Felicity’s mother dismisses him, almost cooly, and he figures too little, too late, ready to head for bed, but she’s not about to make it easy on him.

“Long day?” she asks curiously, and it occurs to him how different their definitions of that phrase might. But she’s not wrong, even if she does seem little skeptical.

“Oh, no, I’m just going to get ready. I don’t…” He catches himself casually about to reveal a great deal about himself with just a few words. But she is Felicity’s mother, after all. She’s already seen how he loves her daughter, there’s not a part of him that’s more vulnerable. “I don’t sleep without her.”

Her eyes go wide and it’s that same hopeful disbelief that he sees in Felicity’s sometimes. It pains him to think about how life beat that into both of them, even more so when Donna’s teasing tone is laced with the same worry when she calls after him halfway up the stairs.

“You’re gonna marry her, aren’t you?”

He pauses for a moment to consider whether she might enjoy hearing the souffle story, but exhaustion is setting in fast, and so for now he settles for the simpler answer and a smile. “Trying my best.”

“I’m serious,” Donna says, though she doesn’t have to. She and Felicity have the same “serious eyes,” even if she is smiling at him.

“So am I,” he assures her. Might as well go all in. “Got a ring and everything.”

“Can I see it?” He has to laugh at that, she’s been a few feet away from it this whole time.

“It’s in the bowl, actually,” he points, still slightly amazed he hasn’t been caught already. Unless he has, and that’s another thing they’re not saying to each other. His worries burn away though, at the sight of Donna’s face as she picks up the bowl of glass beads, holding them up for a better angle to marvel at the ring.

It’s a nice ring, he knows that. He also knows that it barely matters at all. He’s already got a whole other speech worked out if she doesn’t want to wear his mother’s keepsake, about how they’ll give it to Thea and pick out whatever she wants. It would make him happy to have it be a family thing, but truthfully, he doesn’t care. He’d twist a gum wrapper around her ring finger tomorrow if she’d let him.

“It was my mother’s.” He offers the information up, just like he had to the Hoffmans back in Ivy Town. Again, no therapist needed. Donna gives him a look that’s warmth and kindness and something more, like she knows what it means, before she’s back to the bowl.

“It’s a beautiful ring, Oliver.” Just like before, her approval soothes some part of him that he didn’t even realize was aching. His heart fairly soars when she tells him, “It’s perfect.”

She’s still just holding the bowl and it occurs to him that it’s past time to get the thing out of there and onto Felicity’s left hand. Her mother seems to have the same idea, babbling something about bad juju as he descends the stairs.

“If you had known my mother,” he assures her, “you might not be so worried about that.”

“So, what are you waiting for?”

That is the question, isn’t it? He loses himself in thought for a moment, rolling the ring between his thumb and his forefinger and thinking about how far they’ve come and just how far there is left to go. He knows there’s not a force strong enough to pull them from each other’s side now, save for maybe their own demons. But still, this is it, it’s not like he doesn’t know it is. So what’s he waiting for? “I just…don’t want to rush her.”

“She might get a little scared, Oliver,” Donna tells him, reminding’ “But you have to know, I’ve never seen her want anything more.”

Her words carry him up the stairs to their bedroom like he’s floating on a cloud, and he goes through his routine with barely a thought in his head. When there’s nothing left to do but wait for her, he starts another letter to Tommy, amazed at how it’s become such a habit. He’s got a few good paragraphs on the incomparable Smoak women before one of them is walking through the bedroom door.

He can tell she’s tired, wearied by the weight of the world, but she’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his whole life.

He lets her speak first, because in that split second he realizes that if he goes first, he’s going to ask her to marry him, and whatever she wants to say will get brushed over. He doesn’t want that, not tonight, not after she’s been on this emotional roller coaster of a week.

And besides, it’s not like he could have said it any better. He only doubts himself for one second when she pauses, but then she’s right there to reassure him, thanking him like he doesn’t deserve and loving him like he still can’t quite believe. He _has_ found himself in her, and it make his heart soar to consider that the same might be true for her.

She’ll be his wife soon enough. For now, it’s enough that she’s his home.


End file.
